Wordplay
by Kuroi Hakuchou
Summary: Because of Axel and Xigbar, Higurashi Kagome is forced to play a game of Scrabble with the notorious silver-tongue, Xaldin. And whoever loses owes the winner a favor. Great. Just great. Inu/KH xover, slight Kag/Xal.


Man, WHY did I even write this? Okay, Xaldin has a sexy voice and pretty eyes and all, but I'm not really into big, hairy guys. And there's also the matter in which he got PWN'd by Belle. Big scary Xaldin got elbowed in the balls (around that area, anyway) by a woman half his size, therefore having the tables turned on him. Go Belle, but jeez! Bet the rest of the Organization laughed their asses off at him.

Anyway, I started this last year for my KH oneshot series (an idea that I discarded) and managed to finish it when I had one of my infamous, short-lived bursts of inspiration. I don't know if I'm going to write a companion to it or not.

So, enjoy. Especially you Xaldin fans.

Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts or InuYasha. If I did, Sora would've had his ass handed to him and the Organization would have won. Team Xemnas forever! ^.^

"talking"

'_thinking_'

**~Wordplay~**

-o-o-o-

"_Children are the most desirable opponents at Scrabble as they are both easy to beat and fun to cheat."_

~ Fran Lebowitz

-o-o-o-

"Let's see…" said Kagome, looking down at the little tiles she was shielding with her sleeved arm.

Her sapphire eyes glanced at the game board in front of her, taking in the letters there, before picking up three of the small, square tiles she was shielding from view.

Carefully, she placed the three tiles before the tile with the letter 'L' on it, spelling out L-O-C-K. Satisfied, Kagome smirked up at Axel, who was next to put down a word on the board.

Kagome had made this homemade Scrabble board from scratch, buying the materials necessary in Twilight Town. It had taken her almost two months to finish it, working on it when she had free time. Cutting out and painting the little cardboard tiles had been taxing on her eyes, as well as writing the letters and score numbers on them. But it had been worth it, because Scrabble was now the most popular activity among most of the members of the organization.

Axel's green eyes spotted an 'S' that had free space next to it and smirked. He placed down an 'H' and an 'I', only to jump with surprise when Kagome slapped her gloved hand against the hard surface of the table.

"Ah!" she exclaimed angrily, "I said no curse words!"

Scowling childishly, Axel grabbed a letter from his group of tiles and put it down. The word spelled S-H-I-P.

Xigbar, who was sitting nearby on one of the couches, chuckled darkly and said, "I don't think 'shit' is in that dictionary of Zexion's."

Zexion glanced up calculatingly from the open dictionary he had in his hands, and then resumed his reading. His Lexicon—amazingly—lay abandoned at his side, though it was tucked snugly against his thigh.

Scowling, Kagome wrote down Axel's current score on the slip of paper she had near her with a pencil. She saw the pyromaniac attempt to peek at her letter tiles, and she sent him a dirty look. Axel rolled his eyes.

"Why don't you just put them on the floor, like I do?" he asked, gesturing at his little group of tiles near his feet.

"Because I don't want to have to keep looking all the way down there to see what letters I have!" Kagome snapped.

"Yeesh, you get really scary during this game," said Axel, ruffling his scarlet hair with exasperation.

"And to think she's the one who invented it," chuckled Xigbar gruffly.

"I did not _invent _it! I just made a copy of it from the one in _my_ world!" said Kagome angrily.

"Fine, you _copied_ it," growled Xigbar, "but you did make it and introduce it to us."

"Hmph," snorted Kagome, putting down a 'P-I-N-G' at the end of 'T-R-I-P', one of her previous words.

She grabbed four more tiles from the unused pile of letters for her own group and scribbled down her score. Axel raised an eyebrow at the amount she was writing down, frowning in suspicion.

"Let me see that!" he said, suddenly reaching across the table for the slip of paper, upsetting the Scrabble board in the process.

"Axel!" cried Kagome with disbelief and anger. "You moron!"

Xigbar burst out in loud laughter at her statement, attracting a cold glare from Saïx, who was standing nearby. Kagome, meanwhile, was hastily trying to put the tiles back in their appropriate places, while Axel examined the score sheet with scrutiny. Zexion rolled his eyes and continued to read.

"This can't be right! Look how much higher your score is than mine!" said Axel, thrusting the sheet of paper in Kagome's face.

"That's because I _add_ to words I've already put down, you idiot! Like what I just did to 'TRIP'!" spat Kagome, grabbing the score sheet and slamming it back down on the table.

"_Where_ is 'TRIP', exactly?" asked Axel, looking down at the jumble of tiles on the board.

"It's hopeless! We'll have to start over!" Kagome groaned, rubbing her eyes at the mess of letters.

"So? It's just a game," said Axel, leaning back against his couch.

"But _I_ was winning!" cried Kagome, earning her a glare from Saïx.

"Says you. I don't trust you to add up our scores," said Axel.

"And you trust _Demyx_ to get the job done?" asked Kagome skeptically, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah," said Axel, looking at Kagome as if she were stupid.

"_Why?_" asked Kagome.

"Let's see. Maybe because he's a Nobody, so no _emotions_ will affect his scorekeeping," stated Axel, and Kagome glowered at him. "Oh, and because he doesn't play the game himself; so that makes him a neutral party."

"Well, what if he prefers one of us over the other?" asked Kagome.

"He knows that if he does that, the one he _didn't_ prefer would _hurt_ him afterwards," said Axel smugly, his lips curling into a smirk.

"Well, since Demyx is on a mission, who's going to keep score?" asked Kagome.

The two stared at each other for a moment, before both automatically looked at Zexion. The Lexicon-user didn't even look up from the dictionary as he shook his head and held up his hand in a halting motion.

Seeing that Zexion wasn't an option, Kagome and Axel shifted their sight towards Xigbar, who burst out in more loud laughter.

"I'm just here for the entertainment," he said, holding up his hands.

"There won't _be _any unless you keep our scores," said Kagome threateningly.

"Hey, I never said that the entertainment was you two playing the game. I actually come here to watch you two bicker and squabble, which you can still do without the game in the first place," said Xigbar, showing off his large canine teeth with a grin.

"Ugh, fine," said Kagome resignedly, leaning back against her couch.

"I guess we'll have to wait for Demyx to come back," said Axel, his fingers absently moving around the jumbled letters on the Scrabble board.

Kagome grunted in response, watching him play around with the letter tiles. Within a few seconds, he had cleared the board and spelled out 'JACKASS' with the letters.

"There's a curse word you could use for the game," Kagome pointed out.

"Oh, yeahhhh…" said Axel with realization.

He began picking letters out of the discarded pile of tiles, and began forming a sentence on the board. Kagome's face turned red when she saw what he had spelled.

'KAGOME IS A JACKASS'.

Axel grinned up at her mischievously, and Kagome gave a growl of frustration. She swept the board clean and rummaged through the tiles to make another sentence.

'AXEL IS A BUTTHEAD'.

The pyromaniac Nobody snorted and said, "Now that's rather childish, isn't it? Why don't you use words with more gusto? Like this."

Within a minute, he had the assembled another sentence, causing Kagome to gasp and Xigbar to snicker at the look on her face.

'KAGOME IS A NYMPHOMANIAC'.

Kagoem's face flushed; that was going too far! She had never had sex, much less kissed a boy.

"Why you–!" she growled, her hands working at an almost inhuman pace to lay down her next sentence.

But she had only gotten down 'AXEL IS A PIECE OF' before there was the sound of a dark corridor opening. Hers and Axel's heads shot up expectantly.

"Is it Demyx?" asked Kagome.

She and Axel both slumped with disappointment when the person that stepped into the room from the dark corridor wasn't Demyx.

"Nah, it's just Xaldin," grunted Xigbar.

He turned his gaze back to Kagome and Axel, made a shooing motion with his hand, and said, "Please continue. Maybe if you insult Kagome enough, Axel, she'll fight you to the death. Now _that's_ entertainment."

Kagome rolled her eyes at Xigbar's grinning face and turned back to the game board.

"You were saying?" asked Axel, looking pointedly down at the board.

"Ah, I don't feel like finishing it," said Kagome, cupping her chin in her hand and looking away with boredom.

Axel grunted and rolled his eyes. Kagome got a bad feeling when she suddenly saw a certain look come over his face, one that indicated that he had an idea. While some of his ideas were good (like developing new battle tactics), the majority of them were dumb (like the time he wanted to 'toilet-paper' Saïx's room on a whim).

"Hey, why don't we have Xaldin keep score for us?" he asked, gesturing towards the third-rank Nobody, who was debriefing his mission to Saïx.

"NO!" said Kagome with panic, slamming her hand down on the Scrabble board—letter tiles flew in every which direction.

"Whoa! Easy! What's the matter with you?" asked Axel, picking a tile off his black coat.

"Let's just wait for Demyx," said Kagome, folding her arms stubbornly.

A smirk spread over Axel's face, and Kagome knew that he wasn't about to let it go.

"Are you _afraid_ of Xaldin?" asked the pyromaniac, snickering.

"No," said Kagome.

It was true that the man _intimated_ her, but that was because he was a big guy and always had a scary face on. Hell, he wasn't alone. Lexaeus, Saïx, Marluxia, and the Superior also made her want to go hide in a corner and never come out again, just like with Xaldin.

But Xaldin also intrigued her, what with his unique accent and soft way of speaking. Although she thought his sideburns were too extravagant, and that his dreadlocks were a reason to keep away from him, Xaldin managed to have her keep sneaking glances at him whenever Kagome thought he wouldn't notice.

Axel, meanwhile, was snorting with laughter and pointing at her.

"Yes, you are," he said, his emerald eyes alight with his personal amusement.

"Aren't you?" Kagome hissed; it was hard to believe that she was the only one in the Organization that Xaldin intimidated.

"Uh, no," said Axel. "Then again, I'm not a barely-over-five-feet shrimp like you."

"Damn you…" growled Kagome, holding a clenched fist up threateningly near her face; her height was a sore subject for her, especially with the constant presence of tall Organization members.

"Nah, Xaldin won't keep score for you," spoke up Xigbar casually. "He's too proud for that."

"Ha!" said Kagome triumphantly, pointing at Axel and grinning victoriously. "In your face!"

"But he might play," continued the arrowgun-wielder. "He's good with words, y'know."

"Hey, yeah!" said Axel, his face brightening as he pounded a fist into his open palm. "And _I_ can keep score, so that 'Gome can't cheat! Hey, Xaldin!"

"For the last time," Kagome gritted out angrily, "I didn't cheat, you dumbass!"

Axel ignored her, instead waving over the person he had called. To Kagome's despair, the dreadlocked Nobody actually complied with Axel's wishes and approached them, his blue eyes hard as sapphire gems.

"What do you want, VIII?" asked Xaldin in that strange, slurred yet lilting accent, his voice dangerously soft.

Kagome noticeably tried to make herself inconspicuous, saying nothing and seeming to curl in on herself. Xigbar snorted at this and Zexion, who was watching now, rolled his eyes slightly.

"Hey, Xaldin," said Axel, smirking. "Feel up to a game of Scrabble? 'Gome needs someone to play against and I've already played a couple of rounds."

Xaldin looked down at the Scrabble board, raising an eyebrow at the sentences laid out there. Kagome blushed bright pink and scattered 'KAGOME IS A NYMPHOMANIAC' with a swipe of her hand.

Apparently uninterested, Xaldin turned to leave them and said, "I do not have time to play childish games."

He took a step towards the entrance of the Grey Area, but he stopped abruptly when Axel began making chicken noises from behind him. Xigbar guffawed while Xaldin slowly looked over his shoulder at the pyromaniac, who grinned at him and continued to mimic poultry.

"Are you calling me a coward, VIII?" demanded Xaldin softly, his extravagant eyebrows furrowing in faux anger.

"Are you going to play, Xaldin?" replied Axel, his green eyes sparkling mischievously. "'Cause it looks like you're afraid to lose against a girl."

"I hope you're not tired, Axel," began Kagome sweetly, an eyebrow twitching in anger, "because I might just kill you in your sleep if you keep it up."

She was inwardly hoping that Xaldin would just walk away.

However, the third-ranked Nobody glanced over at Xigbar and said, "If I win, what do I get in return?"

Kagome and Axel grunted with surprise, while Zexion merely raised a thin eyebrow. Xigbar smirked, as if he had been expecting this.

"'In return?'" repeated Axel, looking puzzled.

"You don't expect me to play for nothing, now do you, Axel?" inquired Xaldin, narrowing his eyes challengingly at the redhead.

Axel huffed and looked away, muttering inaudibly under his breath.

"How 'bout this?" said Xigbar, gesturing his arms to the sides. "Whoever loses owes the winner a favor."

"What?" demanded Kagome, sitting up ramrod straight in her seat.

For the first time during the conversation, Xaldin looked directly at Kagome, who froze like a frightened rabbit under the gaze of a predator. The Nobody's deep blue eyes seemed to scrutinize her for a moment before turning back to Xigbar.

"I believe…that I will play."

"You can't be serious!" protested Kagome, half out of fear and half out of anger.

Xaldin turned to her and smiled pleasantly, looking as gentlemanly as a huge, side-burned guy could.

"I will accept nothing else," he told her, the pleasantness of his smile increasing. "Surely you are not afraid of losing?"

Kagome got the sudden urge to run screaming with terror from the room, but stayed rooted to the spot with a defiant scowl on her face.

"_No_," she answered, glaring at him with her own blue-grey eyes.

"Very well, then," said Xaldin, before promptly taking a seat next to her on the couch.

'_Whaaaaat? No!_' thought Kagome with panic, who tried to scoot as far away from the lance-wielder as possible without being noticed by said person.

"What are the rules?" asked Xaldin, his lips still curled into that scary-pleasant smile.

"Axel will tell you," Kagome grumbled, managing to grab the game board from the table with the tips of her fingers and bring it closer to her.

"What! Why me?" demanded Axel, who held the score sheet and the pencil in his hands.

"Because _you_ started this, that's why, you stupid ass!" snarled Kagome, giving him the death glare as she snatched the letter tiles from the board and returned them into the crudely-made letter box.

"Fine," sighed the redhead, sounding like a dying cow.

He ruffled his hair in an irritated fashion, not daring to meet her murderous gaze.

"There's these letter tiles, see, and you have to…" began Axel, bored out of his mind.

As the eighth member of the Organization droned on and on, Kagome made it her duty to pick up the letter tiles that had been scattered in various areas around the table. The others paid her no mind, letting her retrieve the pieces of the alphabet, until Xigbar purposely put his booted foot over a tile near him. He grinned nastily at her until Kagome stomped on his foot and ground her heel into it with as much force as she could muster in her anger. Grunting with pain, Xigbar relented and let her pick up the letter tile, but not without attempting to trip her as she passed by his legs.

Finally, after she had retrieved all of the lost tiles, Kagome sat down again on the couch and hugged the arm with her hip to keep as much space between her and Xaldin.

"…are the rules clear?" droned Axel, looking at the lance-wielder with a look that said 'you'd better not make me go through all of that again'.

"As a crystal," purred Xaldin, making Kagome wonder what on earth he was pleased about.

She froze when he looked her way and covered for it by scowling darkly.

"Now, what is that look for?" asked Xaldin, sounding as if he were teasing her. "Remember, I was invited to play, and you are being quite inhospitable to your guest. You make a terrible host with _that_ expression."

"Let's get one thing straight, Xaldin," bit out Kagome angrily, a little surprised at her animosity towards the dreadlocked man. "I didn't invite you over here; Axel did, so that makes _him_ the host. Also, if I weren't locked into this 'loser becomes the winner's slave or something' thingymojigger, I'd get up right now and leave the room. So I will gladly act the way I'm feeling right now, thank you very much."

"My, you have a sharp tongue," said Xaldin mockingly, not sounding fazed in the least. "Perhaps I'd better proceed carefully, lest I be cut by it."

Kagome turned beet-red at his mockery, causing Xigbar to chortle with laughter. Not about to be undone by a guy with huge sideburns, Kagome thrust the box of letter tiles towards Xaldin and jiggled it.

"Choose your poison, _sir_," she said dangerously, shaking the box to make the tiles click around.

The third member of the Organization responded by removing his thick, black gloves, revealing gargantuan hands with fingernails so perfectly groomed that Kagome was ashamed of her own bitten-to-the-quick digits. What did the guy do, sit in his room and manicure his fingers?

"What may seem poison to you may actually be an antidote to your venom," said Xaldin pleasantly, reaching into the box with two fingers and drawing out the required number of letters.

Kagome said nothing, merely glaring at him out of the corner of her eye and taking out her own tiles once he was done.

"You go first," she told him, "since you're the _guest_."

"Gladly," said Xaldin, plucking up four of his tiles.

He carefully laid them out in the middle of the Scrabble board, his large form leaning over to reach the table.

Kagome watched with a sense of growing dread as the letters 'S', 'E', 'R', and 'F' were put in place, then felt cold when she recognized the word. _SERF_. Wasn't that like the medieval version of a slave or an indentured servant?

Glancing at Xaldin, she saw him grin wickedly at her out of the corner of his mouth, revealing his startlingly-white teeth. Once she saw the grin, Kagome was sorely tempted to fling the Scrabble board at his face as a distraction while she ran as fast as she could in the opposite distraction. Choosing that word… He was practically telling her he would win.

Screwing up her courage, Kagome glowered at him venomously as she picked up the letters she wanted to use.

'_If that's the way you want to play,_' she thought, laying her letters beneath Xaldin's 'S', '_I'll gladly oblige_.'

When she finished, 'S-L-I-M-E' hung from the bottom of 'S-E-R-F'. Then she sent Xaldin an evil sideways smirk, as if to say 'if I'm going to be your servant, then this is what I think of _you_'.

"Touché, mademoiselle," purred Xaldin, flashing her a white canine tooth in a smirk of his own. "If you'll hand me the letter box?"

Kagome happily obliged. _It was on._

-o-o-o-

"Let's see…" hummed Axel as he bent over the score sheet with a battered-looking pencil in his hand.

Kagome sat rigidly on the edge of her seat, her face shining with sweat from her nervousness and her hand clutched the arm of the couch like a lifeline. On the opposite end of the sofa, Xaldin reclined comfortably and gracefully—which peeved Kagome—as they waited for Axel to add up their scores. 'They' included Xigbar and Zexion; the arrowgun user was sitting there looking at them with a big, stupid and _evil_ grin on his face (in other words, his specialty) and Zexion still seemed to have his nose buried in the dictionary, but his eyes weren't moving.

The Scrabble board was absolutely _covered_ in words, some that Kagome had never even heard of until now and had to ask Zexion for confirmation; English wasn't her birth language, after all. In fairness, Kagome had used words that even Xaldin, silver-tongued though he was, didn't know, considering that they were from _her_ language—words such as tsunami, sushi, and sashimi. Amazingly, those words had spanned even across _worlds_, though they were a lot more obscure than in foreign countries back home, so they were in Zexion's dictionary.

'_It's gotta be close,_' thought Kagome, a bead of sweat rolling down the side of her face. '_We both added to our words, so our scores are going to be high._'

Xaldin, she noticed with anger, was not shiny at all; he obviously hadn't been worried about losing and therefore had not sweated, which infuriated her further. Crossing her arms in front of her irately, she called him several names in her head that would have given her grandfather a heart attack.

"Done!" said Axel, making everyone waiting on him look up expectantly.

Then he promptly began circling the final scores slowly and carefully, making them wait even longer. Xigbar snorted and rolled his eyes at this behavior, Zexion simply went back to reading the dictionary, and Xaldin raised an extravagant eyebrow. Kagome scowled and clenched her jaw, digging her fingers into her arms, the sound of the cheap lead squeaking (1) across the paper grating on her nerves.

Seconds later, she snapped.

"_Will you just tell us already?_" she roared angrily, resulting in Axel jumping with surprise and breaking the lead; Saïx sent her a cold look at the back of her head, which she didn't see.

The piece of lead flew through the air and, upon landing, rolled near Xigbar's feet, where everybody stared at it for a moment. Then Xigbar stomped on the lead, reducing it into graphite powder.

Axel turned his gaze back to the broken pencil.

"Damn," he said, looking up at Kagome mischievously with the tops of his eyes, "I guess I'm gonna have to go and sharpen it—"

"_No,_" interrupted Kagome with false sweetness, a tick mark on her forehead, "you're going to _read_ us the _scores_!"

"Alright, alright," he muttered, ruffling his hair haphazardly.

He picked up the score sheet, cleared his throat so loud that Saïx sent him a glare, and sniffed in a dignified sort of way.

"Let's see…" said Axel, scrutinizing the paper. "Xaldin has two hundred and fifty-four points and Kagome has two hundred annndd…"

Kagome leaned forward expectantly, her face so intent it was almost scary.

"Fifty-two," finished Axel, grinning in a very Xigbar-like way. "Ooh, bummer, 'Gome."

"_What?_" shrieked Kagome with disbelief, earning her a dark look from Saïx. "I lost by _two_ points?"

"Yep. See for yourself," said Axel, sliding her paper across the table.

Kagome snatched it up with a vengeance and frantically scanned the list of points, her hands trembling slightly. What she saw boded bad news for her: the math was correct. So she had really lost by…

"Two points…?" she said in shock, placing the paper back on the table.

"It seems that you owe me a favor, my dear," said Xaldin, sending her that scary-yet-pleasant smile.

Xigbar cackled, slapping his knee with delight.

"Now you have to do _whatever_ he wants you to!" he laughed, obviously taking great pleasure in Kagome's misfortune.

Realization dawned on Kagome, now that most of the shock had worn off. She turned murderously in Xigbar's direction, an evil aura emitting from her like radiation. Reaching for the Scrabble board, she stood.

"You…! This is all your fault, you bastard!" she yelled, throwing the Scrabble board at him like a Frisbee. "You and your stupid eye-patch!"

Xigbar didn't even bother to dodge the flying game board and simply grunted with discomfort when one of its corners hit him square in the chest. Everyone had to dodge a shower of letter tiles.

"Don't diss the eye-patch, kid," said Xigbar, brushing letters off of his chest. "Sheesh, you're a sore loser."

"I have every right to be angry, since _you_ and _him_ are the ones that got me into this mess!" said Kagome angrily, pointing at Xigbar and Axel. "Next time, _you_ can play and end up owing a favor!"

"Nah, I'll pass," said Xigbar lazily, putting his arms behind his head and leaning back against the couch.

"Why you…!" growled Kagome, preparing to take off her shoe and beat him to death with it.

"As entertaining as this is, I fear I must bid you adieu," said Xaldin from behind Kagome.

Whirling around, Kagome stumbled back slightly when she saw that he was standing, and towering over her to boot.

"Um… Goodbye?" she said, blinking with confusion when she saw him looking down expectantly at her.

"May I have your hand, mademoiselle?" asked Xaldin, holding out his own. "I must congratulate you on your near-success of besting me at wordplay."

"Uh…" said Kagome; was that a compliment or not?

She looked dubiously at his hand and wondered whether there was catch to this. Didn't seem to be…

"Alright," she said, offering her hand. "What, are we shaking hands or— Whadda whadda _what_…?"

Xaldin had lifted her tiny hand in his own and bent down over it, brushing his surprisingly soft lips over it in a kiss befitting of a queen. Kagome turned scarlet, her eyes as wide as saucers.

Lifting his piercing blue eyes up at her from her hand, Xaldin gave her a dark, sensual look that sent a jolt throughout her body and made her cheeks turn even redder. Was he really looking at _her_ like _that_?

"Ehhh…?" she said weakly, her shock shutting down her ability to form coherent words.

Smirking slightly, Xaldin lifted up to his full height and released her hand.

"Good afternoon," he said pleasantly in farewell, and then turned to leave.

Glancing over at grey-haired bookworm on the couch, he added, "Make sure you return my dictionary when you're done, Zexion."

"Hm."

With a flick of his dreads, Xaldin left the silent group, walking silently despite his large bulk. His form headed for the entrance of the Grey Area, where he disappeared down the long, dark hallway leading into the rest of the castle.

Nobody spoke for a long moment. Xigbar had raised an eyebrow at Xaldin's gentlemanly display; Axel's mouth was hanging open. Kagome stood as still as a statue, staring after the long-gone lance-user (2). Zexion seemed to be the only one unperturbed by Xaldin kissing Kagome's hand, but that may have been because he had been too busy reading to notice.

"That's _Xaldin's_ dictionary?" said Kagome finally, looking at Zexion.

"Mm-hmm," said the Lexicon-user absently.

"I hear Luxord borrows it quite a bit (3)," said Xigbar, putting his own two cents in.

"Wait, wait, wait," said Axel, waving his arms about with his emerald eyes squeezed shut. "Xaldin _kissed_ Kagome's hand, and we're talking about _dictionaries_?"

"Mm-hmm," said Zexion again, making the others wonder if he was answering automatically without listening.

"He didn't even ask for a favor!" protested Axel in an angry voice, gesturing his hand at the entrance of the room.

At the thought, Kagome plopped down on the couch again, feeling dazed. It was probably just her imagination, but her hand seemed to burn where Xaldin's lips had touched her skin.

"Oh, he will," said Xigbar, sending her one of his specialty grins. "He'll probably wait until you're tired after a mission, then tie you up in the training area and use you for target practice."

"What?" said Kagome with panic.

"Relax. I was just pulling your leg," snorted Xigbar, rolling his eye.

Kagome visibly relaxed, slumping against the back of the couch tiredly. Even though it had been a game of Scrabble, she seemed mentally and physically exhausted. No wonder; she had put all her effort into the game so that she wouldn't end up where she was now: owing Xaldin a favor.

"Well, if he did," continued the arrowgun user casually, "don't worry; people would remember you as the girl who _almost_ beat Xaldin at wordplay."

"Shut up, Xigbar," said Kagome miserably, running a hand through her hair.

"Mm-hmm," said Zexion.

Axel laughed. Xigbar scowled. And Kagome secretly worried.

What would Xaldin request of her, when the time finally came…?

As her mind wandered with anxiety, her eye lit on the piece of paper that Axel had used to add up the scores. There were two columns, one for her and one for Xaldin. What caught her eye wasn't the title of the lance-user's column ('Gorilla Face'), but hers. Written in capital letters and underlined was the title 'The Nympho'.

"AXXEEELLLL!"

_**Owari**_

-o-o-o-

**Author's Notes**

(1) Have you ever had a pencil with lead like that? It's embarrassing, especially when your class is working in silence. T.T That's why mechanical pencils are a gift from the heavens. Have squeaky lead? Just snap off the end of the graphite and click to start anew! Ta-daa!

(2) Long John Silver's younger brother, Long Gone Lance-User. Sorry, I just couldn't resist! XD

(3) Luxord's got a big vocabulary, too.

-o-o-o-

Dun-dun-dun! There you have it! Truth be told, I didn't know if I'd ever finish this one, but I guess it goes to show that my brain works in mysterious ways. Really mysterious ways… ***grumbles*** Did you Xaldin fans enjoy this bit? ***cough***read and review***cough***

Until next time, ja ne! ^.^


End file.
